Mike Piehl

10/25/2016

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Maximizing legacy IT investment with Salesforce

The following post was originally published by Magnet 360, a Mindtree company and Salesforce Platinum Partner that specializes in driving audience engagement to ensure meaningful business outcomes.

To stay competitive in the marketplace, your financial services brand has made significant investments in information technology (IT). From databases to servers to specialized customer relationship solutions, financial services companies have allocated huge amounts of resources to IT, only to have to upgrade, add to or replace these technologies on a too frequent basis. As they try to keep up, they create several layers of ad hoc processes that do not always integrate with each other, but replacing an entire legacy system every time technology changes is impossible, not to mention fiscally irresponsible. It can be extremely difficult to overcome the barrier of these old processes to become more efficient.

Fortunately, there’s a solution. Using Salesforce as an engagement layer, Magnet 360 can federate your business processes and revolutionize your brand practices—without replacing a core banking or insurance administration system.

The Salesforce advantage

Here’s the key: Salesforce captures all the data in your brand’s core systems, then populates it into the Salesforce platform so it can be accessed universally by key stakeholders. Users then engage with Salesforce to use your company’s data and interact with legacy core systems.

Because it leverages existing data and does not require replacement of core systems, Salesforce is not only a cost-effective solution but also a powerful, forward-thinking one. For example, it can be used to initiate transactions with existing core systems. However, if the transactional process—such as an insurance claim—is not instant, Salesforce will require status updates. These updates open up a world of possibilities.

It’s all about status

By leveraging the powerful Salesforce platform, your company can use status updates to engage with your audience while uniting your business practices. For example, the status of a process can be translated externally to communicate with consumers and let them know the timing of the next touchpoint or the estimated time of completion. A consumer needs only discrete pieces of information, not insight into every single step needed to complete the status. To ensure additional engagement, the external status will be less detailed than the concurrently generated internal status, which can be used by an internal resource who needs a more data-rich picture.

Status updates for consumers can be depicted graphically—similar to the tracker function used on pizza delivery websites—to show where a process or stands or when a task will be completed. Internally, updates can be used to trigger a marketing automation activity or shared via a community or mobile app to a sales or service representative who can take appropriate action. Then additional information can be requested and captured through a community portal or entered by a representative.

Using Salesforce as an engagement platform can enhance the digital transformation of your brand. However, it does have potential limitations. Core systems must allow for integration and generate status updates. It is also possible that status updates may expose business or process issues to consumers. Magnet 360 is well equipped to assess the feasibility of federating your business processes.

ROI speaks for itself

When it comes to advocating for digital transformation, Magnet 360 is revolutionary. By using Salesforce as an engagement layer, we transformed the 48 unintegrated business systems of a Fortune 500 title insurer into a nationally integrated platform that streamlined sales, marketing and CRM. Close collaboration with our client and Jitterbit, our partner, led to a solution that increased efficiency and uniformity of messages across the organization. At first the client expressed some resistance at the estimate, but the initial cost of transformation was repaid within two months after implementation.

Ready, set, transform

You’ve invested heavily in technology designed to streamline your business processes and keep your brand competitive. But with each upgrade or addition to your IT base, those processes may have become inefficient in the way they interact. Acting as an engagement layer, Salesforce will change the order of business. If you’re ready to get started, contact Magnet 360, a Mindtree company—we’ll help launch your digital transformation.